“Of course I would,” he said impatiently. “But I am not the King of England…am I? It seems to me, madame, that we had this same conversation once before, in a Guildford chapel more than two years ago. Not much has changed since then, has it? That hawk still will not hunt.”
Matilda found Stephen in the church, standing before the tomb of the sainted Confessor, the last but one of the Saxon kings. He’d just lit a candle, but at sound of her familiar footsteps, he turned so abruptly that the flame guttered out. When she was almost close enough to touch, he said softly, “I have to do this, Tilda. I cannot let Will barter his freedom for mine.”
“I know.”
“Do you think I am wrong?”
She was silent for some moments, considering. “As your wife, I would gladly give a dozen Sherbornes to gain Will’s release. As your queen, I have doubts. It is a difficult decision, Stephen, and I am glad it is not mine to make.”
Stephen reached out to her then, entwined her fingers in his. “It was not difficult for me. You must understand that. For me, it was an easy choice, for it was the only choice.”
“I know,” she said again, and coming into his arms, she clung tightly, resting her cheek against his chest as she sought to comprehend the ultimate irony, she who had no irony at all in her soul, that the qualities she most loved in Stephen were the very ones that were crippling his kingship.
29
Tower of London
October 1143
Geoffrey de Mandeville had lost track of time, could not be sure how long he’d been held as a prisoner in the stronghold that had so recently been his. On those rare occasions when his rage receded enough for calculation, he thought it must be nigh on a fortnight, for it had been Michaelmas week when he’d arrived at St Albans for the king’s council, unsuspecting that he was riding into an ambush.
He still felt a sense of disbelief, remembering that moment when the king had turned upon him without warning, ordering his arrest. He’d not even been able to resist, for Stephen had managed to separate him from his men before springing the trap. Of course Stephen was now in trouble with the Church, for the arrest had taken place within the abbey grounds, and the outraged abbot had viewed this as sacrilege. But he could take little consolation from that, for he’d been dragged off to London in chains, forced to order his garrison at the Tower to submit, and then thrown into one of his own dungeons. And now he waited, alone in the darkness, for the king to decree his fate, his world in ruins, and nothing to sustain him but his hatred.
When he was brought before them, dirty and unkempt, blinking like a barn owl in the sudden surge of sunlight, Matilda was taken aback; could this pitiful wretch of a prisoner and the elegant, prideful Earl of Essex be one and the same? What shocked her even more than how far he’d fallen was the joy she took in it. Moving to her husband’s side, she stared coldly at Geoffrey de Mandeville as he was shoved to his knees before them.
Stephen was experiencing the same unfamiliar emotion: satisfaction in an enemy’s suffering. “You do not look as if you’ve enjoyed your stay here at the Tower, my lord earl. But then I doubt that my daughter-in-law enjoyed her stay, either.”
Mandeville’s eyes were gradually adjusting to the light, and when he blinked now, it was in surprise. “Is that what all this is about-the little French lass? No harm came to her, I saw to that. So I imposed my hospitality upon her for a while…what of it? That seems a minor sin, indeed, when compared to some of the other betrayals you’ve forgiven, including those of your own brother. You’d need a tally stick to keep count of all the times he has switched sides!”
Stephen scowled, and so did Matilda and William Martel. But the gibe did find an appreciative audience of one: a laugh floated from the window seat, where William de Ypres was comfortably sprawled, whittling upon a stick of white beech. His amusement seemed genuine, but his blade flashed all the while, paring the wood down to splinters.
“Had you betrayed only me,” Stephen said, “I might have forgiven you. But you wronged my wife and Constance, and there can be no forgiveness for that.”
Geoffrey de Mandeville said nothing, merely glanced toward Matilda and then away. But that look, brief as it was, was chilling in its intensity, its malevolence, for until that moment, Matilda had not known what it was like to be an object of hatred.
“If I pleased myself, I’d keep you caged here at the Tower till you rotted. But you are luckier than you deserve,” Stephen said coolly, “for a number of your fellow barons have argued for clemency. And so I have decided to offer you a choice. If you cooperate, I will set you free.”
Mandeville shifted awkwardly, for Stephen had not given him permission to rise and his calf muscles were cramping. “And what will this…cooperation of mine cost?”
“You’ve already yielded the Tower. Surrender as well your castles at Pleshy and Saffron Walden and I’ll give you your freedom.”
Mandeville took time to think it over, as if seeking to convince someone-if only himself-that there was an actual decision to be made. When he nodded, Stephen gestured and the guards jerked him to his feet. “I’ve a word of warning for you,” he said, “and you’d best take it to heart. You’ll be getting no second chances.”
Mandeville paused at the door, balking when the guards would have pushed him through. “You may be sure,” he said to Stephen, “that I will remember.”
Once Mandeville was gone, Stephen took Matilda’s hand and steered her toward the settle. “A pity Henry was not here to see that,” he said, surprising them all, for he did not often express a yearning for his brother’s company.
But the bishop had made possible Geoffrey de Mandeville’s downfall, and Stephen was grateful. In a maneuver as guileful as it was adroit, Henry had contrived to have the hostile Bishop of Ely charged with Church irregularities, thus compelling him to journey to Rome to defend himself. With the Bishop of Ely absent from England, Stephen no longer needed Mandeville to keep peace in Bishop Nigel’s Fenlands, and he’d at last been able to punish the earl as he deserved.
The reckoning had been no less gratifying for being so belated, and Stephen knew his brother would have enjoyed it immensely. But Henry, too, was now on the way to Rome, seeking to persuade the new Pope to reappoint him as a papal legate.
An even more unlikely source now echoed Stephen’s regrets. “I wish the bishop were here, too,” William de Ypres said, “for I’d wager that he’d have agreed with me-that Geoffrey de Mandeville ought not to have seen the light of day again in this lifetime.”
“Are you still fretting about that, Will?”
“I am, my liege. I know you think you’ve pulled his fangs by taking the Tower and his strongholds away from him. But a defanged snake is still a snake, and my experience says you kill it when you can; you do not let it slither away just because all the other snakes are pleading for mercy.”
Stephen slanted an amused glance in the Fleming’s direction. “I do not think my barons would like your calling them snakes, Will-scales and forked tongues notwithstanding!”
“I am not jesting, my lord king. Why do you think Hugh Bigod and the others were so keen to speak up for Mandeville? You think any of that lot would truly care if you hanged him higher than Haman? They do not want you to punish Mandeville too harshly because they fear that the next time, it might be one of them whose double- dealing comes to light.”
“Your view of mankind is bleak enough to disturb even the Devil,” Stephen joked. “I am not denying that there is some truth in what you say; even Mandeville’s Vere and Clare kindred do not seem overly fond of him. And I’ll not deny, either, that they get downright disquieted at the prospect of one of their own being treated like any other felon or brigand. But no man ever died from the bite of a toothless snake, Will. What trouble could he stir up now? He cannot go crawling off to Maude, not after his betrayal at Winchester. That lady is far less forgiving than I am, and all of Christendom well knows it!”
“I cannot argue with anything you’ve said,” Ypres admitted. “I can only tell you that when I first learned to
